President’s Report

By Sheri Soderberg Pittman

USATT Presidents at the 2000 USA Nationals: Tim Boggan (1972-74, 1974-ret., 1986-88), Dan Seemiller (1990-95), Sheri Pittman (1999-present), Jim McQueen (1998-99), and Sol Schiff (1976-84, 1986-88). Photo by John Oros copyright 2000.

Since I became president in May of 1999, I have been heavily involved in many of our association’s activities. As many people have pointed out to me, and I agree with them, the workload tends to multiply. It is much better for our association, and for our leaders, to delegate and, in particular, to make sure that our association becomes both more staff-driven, and, in areas where that is not possible, to find capable volunteers who can manage specific responsibilities.

I am pleased to share with you the completed new structure of our standing committees. Contact information for each of the chairs can be found at our website. Other positions have also been filled and are noted on our website.

I also forwarded to headquarters a new monthly report template that will provide the Board with a much better tool to assess and monitor staff and committee activities. I anticipate that we will be able to adapt the format for posting on our website.

One of the first things I did in 2001 was travel to headquarters along with Treasurer Tong Lee. Together with Margaret Smith, we interviewed and hired Al Prast, our new financial manager. He comes to us with many years of accounting experience working for the U.S. Army and is diligently processing all of our financial matters. We had hoped that he would have been able to close out all of our 2000 financials in time for Tong Lee to submit a report in this issue, but Al needed more lead time to accomplish the task. Al replaces Karie Wright, who worked part-time and decided to join another NGB. Al will be working full-time. Once he catches up on pending financial matters, he will assist our association in developing additional financial accountability measures and in putting together budget runs for various association projects.

As I have previously reported, the USOC has created a new "sports management team" concept in which a three-person team oversees a designated list of NGBs. Chris Vadala, Wes Barnett, and Leslie Gamez are our USOC sports management team. They met with us and the staff for several hours during our early-January trip. Blair Tripodi, the USOC Marketing Director, attended the meeting for about two hours. During the meeting, we discussed the new partnership arrangement between the USOC and USA Table Tennis. We look forward to this new management style. They reported to us that USATT was among the two or three sports out of about 28 NGBs that were expected to meet their 2000 markers. I extend a special thank you to staffer Debbie Doney who prepared all of the documentation needed to show that we had satisfied the requirements of the markers. We are awaiting official USOC confirmation of our successful completion of our markers. At that time, we will also receive a special bonus payment exceeding $13,000.

During my trip to Colorado Springs, I was also able to speak at length with staff members. I have submitted a staffing proposal to Margaret Smith, who is overseeing office operations in the absence of a designated executive director. The main change in assignments will affect Debbie Doney, who will become much more directly involved in providing club and program development services. This change in focus will assure that you, our association’s members, will get better membership services.

Already one change has taken place to improve the satisfaction of members, namely Tami Walker’s contribution toward getting the ratings backlog eliminated.

Tawny Banh and Todd Sweeris joined Board of USA Table Tennis as the newly-elected Female and Male Player Representatives. They will each serve a two-year term. Thank you to Lily Yip and Jimmy Butler for their service. A special thank you also to Amy Feng, our previous Olympic Athlete Representative. Li Ai now serves in that position.

The U.S. Nationals was an extremely pleasant event, thanks mostly to Margaret Smith and Tournament Director Wayne Johnson. If you weren’t there, I hope you enjoyed the on-line point-by-point tournament coverage provided by Larry Hodges. I also want to extend a special thank you to all of the very capable and dedicated staff and volunteers who ran the event, as far as I could tell, glitch-free. We were also honored to host a member of our sports management team, Wes Barnett.

Special thanks also, as always, to our tournament sponsors – Stiga/Escalade, the Stratosphere Hotel, United Airlines, the Las Vegas & Convention Bureau, and Paddle Palace/Nittaku.

And another round of thanks go to the organizers, presenters, and attendees of the Tournament Directors Workshop and the Coaching Seminar. The meetings were well-attended and participants had positive remarks about both events.

At the U.S. Nationals I honored Neil Smyth with a newly-created special recognition, the President’s Award. This past U.S. Nationals marked the 25th Anniversary of the event. Neil Smyth was largely responsible for the creation of the concept – a U.S. national tournament to balance off the international flavor of our U.S. Open. Thank you, Neil, for all of the joyful moments this tournament has brought to the thousands of participants and fans who have attended this great event!

In early January, I attended the USOC Coach of the Year Recognition weekend in New York City. Dan Seemiller received the honor as National Coach of the Year and Masaki Tajima received the honor as Developmental Coach of the Year. The USOC, along with the host city, makes this event a once-in-a-lifetime memory for those coaches selected to receive this award. The coaches, and their special guests, are treated to all kinds of VIP perks. For this event, Masaki invited his mother and Dan’s daughter was his guest.

The USOC requests that the president or executive director, at the USOC’s expense, also participate in the weekend’s festivities. I had a great time visiting with our coaches as well as getting to know more president and executive directors of the other sports, as well as USOC officials.

The trip also gave me the opportunity to meet with fellow Board member, George Brathwaite. George, a retired United Nations staffer, gave me a personal tour of his old stomping grounds. Then he took me to the local club. A couple nights later, the club members had a special dinner to celebrate the occasion. Unfortunately, I was not able to visit a long time with them because the dinner conflicted with the USOC schedule, but it was great to see the always-present camaraderie of our table tennis family.

Turn to our website, www.usatt.org, for coverage of the Team Trials, which will be held February 7-11. Our writing wizard, Larry Hodges, will once again provide nearly up-to-the-minute updates and behind-the-scenes coverage of the event. USA Table Tennis acknowledges the San Diego Table Tennis Association and the USOC for assisting with the event logistics.

As this issue goes to press, we have a number of projects in the works – including some pending sponsorship deals, an improved Internet presence, and planning for the 30th Anniversary of Ping Diplomacy. I look forward to seeing these developments, and others, reach fruition in the near future. As always, please follow our website for the latest association news.